Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book addresses conflicts other than international war and peace. In exploring diverse paths to reconciliation in a broad range of subjects, the book pursues a problem that plagues the people not only when war threatens: how to get opponents to listen to one another, in the search for genuine, not hypocritical, reconciliation. In doing so, they perform a key function of rhetoric at its best. Just as the word rhetoric covers the universal problems of verbal conflict, whether conducted in defensible or indefensible ways, so the term reconciliation covers the universal human problem: how to avoid meaningless and destructive conflict of all kinds, verbal and non-verbal. Just consider all the terms we have for the effort to resolve or escape from destructive conflicts. The Internet search engine google.com provides instant evidence for the centrality of the issues faced in this challenging volume.